Congress tells Obama to sanction Tuvalu and Tanzania for helping Iran
Now that President Barack Obama has signed the latest new sanctions bill on Iran, lawmakers are urging him to enforce it, starting with penalties against governments that reflag Iranian tankers, namely Tuvalu and Tanzania. House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA) responded to reports that the government of Tuvalu has reflagged 36 Iranian ...
Now that President Barack Obama has signed the latest new sanctions bill on Iran, lawmakers are urging him to enforce it, starting with penalties against governments that reflag Iranian tankers, namely Tuvalu and Tanzania.
House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA) responded to reports that the government of Tuvalu has reflagged 36 Iranian tankers by writing to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday that they should enforce the new law and punish the Tuvaluans.
"The legislation makes clear the Congressional intent that sanctions are to be used to counteract Iran’s shipping operations that help support its weapons program and terrorism," Berman wrote.
On July 9, Berman wrote to the Tuvalu prime minister to urge him to stop reflagging Iranian ships. The Tuvalu government responded with a letter saying its actions didn’t violate U.N. sanctions and that the reflagged ships were only for storing oil and shipping to countries exempted by sanctions.
The Tanzanian government, which has also come under fire for reflagging Iranian tankers, announced this week that it would de-register 36 Iranian ships that had been reflagged. But Berman said that while Tanzania has made progress, Tuvalu is still ignoring the pressure from the international community.
"The U.S. has had some success, most recently with the announcement by the Government of Tanzania that it is de-registering NITC vessels," Berman wrote to Clinton and Geithner. "However, with other governments, the U.S. must take more robust action."
Section 202 of the law, the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act, calls for sanctions against any entity that assists Iran in concealing the identity of its vessels. Executive Order 13608 also authorizes sanctions and penalties against such entities.
Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) wrote to Obama today to call on the administration to use both tools now to increase the pressure on countries that may be aiding Iran in reflagging its ships. They want Treasury to designate the Tanzania Zanzibar International Register of Shipping, based in the United Arab Emirates, and the Tuvalu Ship Registry, based in Singapore, for helping conceal the identity of ships belonging to the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), a sanctioned entity.
"The actions of the Tanzanian and Tuvaluan ship registries directly undermine the international community’s ongoing diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear and ballistic missile technology, and appear to be in violation of the legislation you just signed into law," the senators wrote.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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